Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!crdgw1!crdgw1.ge.com!barnett From: barnett@crdgw1.crd.ge.com (Bruce Barnett) Newsgroups: comp.windows.news Subject: Re: Common toolkit Message-ID: <4736@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Date: 10 Jan 90 16:30:46 GMT References: <8912162135.AA03025@iris.rand.org> <4290@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <4392@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <4458@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <5V++88ggpc2@ficc.uu.net> <4697@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com Reply-To: barnett@crdgw1.crd.ge.com (Bruce Barnett) Organization: GE Corp. R & D, Schenectady, NY Lines: 52 In-reply-to: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) In article , peter@ficc (Peter da Silva) writes: >> Well, how much money is Dec, HP, Sun, etc. going to make by developing >> a toolkit usable on a 1 Meg machine? > >I don't expect Dec, HP, or Sun to do so. It's in their best interests to >make the toolkit as large as is needed. Even if they can't make *much* >money selling memory, it certainly doesn't hurt the balance sheet. Who else is left? If someone wants to make a new toolkit and give it away - fine. > >> Besides, they don't want a toolkit that is comparable to the Mac/MS >> Windows. They want one that is better. > >Well, from my experience with $10,000 machines running X, from a performance >basis alone they've got a lot of catching up to do. Adding a larger and >more complex toolkit sure isn't going to help. You need more experience, I think. X is not a good comparison, anyway. Perhaps a Sparcstation with GX running openwin is a good start. (Read comp.windows.x for speed comparisons) Expect cheaper machines in the future. >> One of the advantages of Open Look and Motif is that it can do things >> that the Mac/PC cannot do. > >That's debatable. UNIX can, yes, bt that'll be true no matter what the >toolkit, or the UI. But from a UI viewpoint, what does a $5000 DECstation >buy you that you can't do with a $2000 Mac? 2 extra buttons? I hate the >one button mouse, but I wouldn't pay $1000 a pop to add more. Want a list of a hundred things that are difficult to do with the Mac interface? (I'm not counting all of the add-on DA's, FKeys, etc. that change the basic UI. You can improve any window system by patching the code.) Again, if you used both the Mac and some of the better toolkits, if would be obvious how inadequate the Mac UI is. Even for simple things like resizing/moving windows, starting up programs, and selecting filenames. I find it amusing that with all of the hoopla about the Mac UI, they still haven't extended the desktop analogy to anything other than a directory and trashcan. The metaphor should extend to *programs*, allowing you to drag a file to a printer, tape drive, text editor, etc. Apple plans this for the System 7 release. Sun is shipping this now. -- Bruce G. Barnett uunet!crdgw1!barnett